[Usability] More use of coloured buttons (1 Viewer)

doveman

Portal Pro
February 12, 2008
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Please make MP easier to use by utilising the coloured buttons.

For example, on the TV Guide I would like to press the Red button to schedule recording of the highlighted programme, or the Yellow button to set an Alert for the highlighted programme.

In the Music section, I would like to be able to press the Green button to add the selected song to the current playlist and when viewing the playlist, I would like to be able to press the Red button to remove a song from the playlist. I've been using MP for a while but I'm still at a loss how to add and remove songs from the playlist. It's just not that user-friendly at the moment.

On some screens, you can even make MP more user-friendly by showing what each coloured button does at the top, as some set-top boxes do, eg:
Red - Record Green - Info Yellow - Alert Blue - IMDB

Doing this makes it far easier for people to know which button does what and also can help avoid having to navigate through menus to do a simple function.

I also believe the current off the side menus are not that user-friendly as they have a tendency to pop-up when the user accidentally presses left or right when they didn't mean to, and it's not that obvious which direction key needs to be pressed to close them again, so they can irritate and slow down the user when just trying to do a simple operation. I think having to press a key to bring up a menu and then either being able to close it by pressing the same key, or having an "exit" option on the menu would be more user-friendly.

I hope the team will seriously consider my suggestions as I truly believe they will enhance MP and make it more accessible.
 

kkendall

Portal Pro
April 24, 2007
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Gouda
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I don't see the point in putting different tasks under 1 button. (i.e. You want the red button on one screen to record and on another screen to delete. That's confusing)
Plus, for years the Red button is toggle between fullscreen or small screen at the bottom-left. Works great for me.

I'd say use the REC button to record (also in the epg)
use the 'i' button for info (as it is)

and if you want to put alert on yellow, imdb under the blue, green to add to playlist and red to delete in music, you can always set that in config! :)
 

doveman

Portal Pro
February 12, 2008
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The point is, at the moment I have to click on the programme, wait for another screen to come up, click on the programme again from the list and then select Record Once. More or less the same for setting Alerts.

This is slow and long-winded and I miss my old STB where I could just skim through the EPG setting Records and Alerts for various programmes quickly and easily.

I appreciate the Red button has always been used to toggle fullscreen but considering that most people will be entering the EPG from LiveTV, it's far more intuitive for them to press Exit to go back to fullscreen LiveTV, which does actually work already (for me at least). I think it would be better to keep the Rec button for bringing up the Record screen, for when users want to do more than set a simple Record Once and use the Red button to mark the programme to be recorded directly from the EPG.

I've got no problem with keeping the Info button to bring up the info screen, but I wonder if there are some remotes without an Info button whereas I imagine most remotes have the four coloured buttons. It is a bit annoying that after bringing up the programme details with the Info button, a second press brings up another menu, rather than just closing the info pop-up, which is what I think most average users would prefer. It can be closed with the Exit button, but it's easier for people if they can just press the same button to open/close the pop-up. As there are options already on the Info pop-up that can be selected from there if required, perhaps it could be considered putting some more on there (I'm not convinced that all the options on the menu are needed) and then making the Info button just open/close this pop-up.

As for being able to set things how I'd like in Config, I just had a look and couldn't see any option in Remote Mapping to set a button to set an Alert or Record marker on a Programme in the EPG, or to add/remove items from the Music playlist. Even if this were possible, you have to understand that for many users the Config is something quite confusing and scary and we should be making MP as easy to use and user friendly out-of-the-box as possible.
 

Baboonanza

Retired Team Member
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  • February 5, 2010
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    I agree with on those two points:
    Info - Should be one press to open, one press to close. The openning of the second window really, really annoys me.
    REC - Why doesn't the REC button set 'Record Once' when used on the EPG? It just seems so obvious.
     

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